The article provides a short systematic introduction to religious constructions around death and afterlife from a cosmologies and cosmogonies, with their differing realms for afterlife and death gods (etc.). But in the ritual behavior (passage rites around death) one can perceive congruencies as comparative religion perspective. Although the approach is therefore primarily systematic-analytic, focusing on typical ideological aspects and ritual actions around death, short examples serve as an illustration for the variety of conceptions and behavioral aspects in different religious traditions. - It can be demonstrated that the issue of death is routed in the overall well as differing options between a religious ideological framework and the ideas underneath the actual ritual behavior (often because of historical depth-dimensions). Furthermore, the anthropological framework can imply monolithic or multiple 'soul' parts, which undergo distinct modifications and afterlife events. Ritually, religious traditions construct death as a time of passage on three levels: for the person and his / her body (funeral rituals) and soul or soul parts (rites for the dead / ancestors), as well as for the direct relatives and the community at large (rituals of mourning and reintegration). In sum, religious traditions provide their followers with a variety of conceptual and ritual strategies in order to be able to cope with death, to confront / imagine death and, thus, to reframe death (and life) during the lifetime from a spiritual outlook; the specific idea of afterlife(s) here is often linked also with a new ethical outlook on life itself and how it should be lead in the face of death.

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Personen: Grünschloß, Andreas

Schlagwörter: Tod Ritual Jenseits Religionswissenschaft